My Essay

This is a draft essay for English class that we are writing for an assessment coupled with our current novel study, we were instructed to post it on our blog.

A good text moves the reader though a variety of emotions. Discuss the variety of emotions you felt when reading the text you studied in class.

Chinese Cinderella, written by Adeline Yen Mah, is a text that will lead the reader through a range of emotions. I will attest this by depicting loneliness, fear, and joy. These were all emotions implicit in the story.

The novel, Chinese Cinderella, evokes the emotion of loneliness. Albeit this emotion permeates through the entirety of this story, there is a particular point of the book where this feeling in most acute. 'All the rooms were empty. Rows and rows of desks and chairs but nobody anywhere...The place had become a ghost town.' The main character was abandoned and helpless, stranded in an institution meant for thousands. As Adeline, the primary character, walked through the halls, alone with just her thoughts, I could hear her footsteps echoing to the corners of the vast ceilings. The description of her situation was such that it was undemanding to imagine it, to picture it clearly, and feel the emotion that was being detailed. Chinese Cinderella will expose the reader to Adeline’s loneliness, to some of her desolate solitude, and this helps to prove that this novel is one that will compel emotion.

Fear is a major emotion portrayed in the story of Chinese Cinderella. Similar to loneliness, fear is shown throughout the story. In one particular situation, the build-up to the confrontation, coupled with the author’s descriptive language, transported me into the autobiographer’s recall. The reader will feel anxious and fear for her. ‘My heart was pounding and blood was rushing into my temples and ears, beating over me in waves.’ In this circumstance, she had been paralyzed with fear; her reverent trepidation had over-powered her mind. As the chapter drew to a close, I was left with a fervent hope that I would never have to experience, firsthand, the feeling that had just been described, further proving that the language explicit in this story was conveying emotion to the reader.

In contrast to the two preceding emotions, joy is experienced, and therefore evoked, very few times during the story. At the end of the book, when she finally gets some of what she truly deserves, the feeling is genuinely catching. ‘My heart gave a giant lurch as it dawned on me…how marvelous it was simply to be alive!’ Adeline had, throughout her entire childhood, got nothing but unquestionable discrimination and abuse. So when she gets what she needs and wants, something she had virtually been working her whole life for, the reader is left not only with some of her overwhelming joy, but a sense of contentment; reassured that there is justice in this world.

This text is indeed one that moves the reader through a variety of emotions.
Throughout the body of this essay I have proven this to you by outlining three emotions that I felt whilst reading the text. I chose loneliness, fear, and joy because they were not only predominant impressions of the text, but because they all contributed to some of the themes of the book. Emotion is not only what you will get out of this book, though, Chinese Cinderella shows that language, like the will to survive, is powerful, and except the person using them, has no boundaries.

Keep in mind that this is just a draft.